Backblaze (NASDAQ:BLZE) Sees Strong Trading Volume – Here’s Why

Shares of Backblaze, Inc. (NASDAQ:BLZE) saw an uptick in trading volume on Monday . 1,290,140 shares were traded during mid-day trading, a decline of 37% from the previous session’s volume of 2,058,583 shares.The stock last traded at $20.1630 and had previously closed at $18.82.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

BLZE has been the topic of several research analyst reports. B. Riley Financial increased their price target on Backblaze from $16.00 to $24.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a report on Tuesday, August 4th. Wall Street Zen raised Backblaze from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating in a report on Saturday. Oppenheimer upped their price objective on Backblaze from $15.00 to $25.00 and gave the company an “outperform” rating in a research report on Tuesday, August 4th. William Blair raised Backblaze from an “underperform” rating to a “market perform” rating in a report on Tuesday, June 23rd. Finally, Craig Hallum raised Backblaze from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating and raised their target price for the stock from $6.50 to $16.00 in a research report on Tuesday, June 23rd. Eight equities research analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, one has given a Hold rating and one has assigned a Sell rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, the company presently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average price target of $19.71.

Backblaze Trading Up 4.4%

The stock has a fifty day moving average of $12.68 and a 200 day moving average of $7.52. The company has a market capitalization of $1.22 billion, a P/E ratio of -57.78 and a beta of 1.56. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.34, a quick ratio of 1.00 and a current ratio of 1.00.

Backblaze (NASDAQ:BLZE) last released its earnings results on Monday, August 3rd. The company reported $0.08 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $0.02 by $0.06. Backblaze had a negative net margin of 13.07% and a negative return on equity of 16.73%. The company had revenue of $42.71 million during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $39.94 million. As a group, equities research analysts anticipate that Backblaze, Inc. will post -0.37 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

A number of large investors have recently modified their holdings of the company. MIRAE ASSET GLOBAL ETFS HOLDINGS Ltd. grew its holdings in Backblaze by 8.2% during the 2nd quarter. MIRAE ASSET GLOBAL ETFS HOLDINGS Ltd. now owns 29,323 shares of the company’s stock valued at $161,000 after buying an additional 2,229 shares in the last quarter. Invesco Ltd. lifted its holdings in shares of Backblaze by 8.3% in the fourth quarter. Invesco Ltd. now owns 44,103 shares of the company’s stock worth $206,000 after buying an additional 3,363 shares in the last quarter. Price T Rowe Associates Inc. MD lifted its holdings in shares of Backblaze by 12.3% in the fourth quarter. Price T Rowe Associates Inc. MD now owns 32,219 shares of the company’s stock worth $151,000 after buying an additional 3,523 shares in the last quarter. Cerity Partners LLC boosted its position in shares of Backblaze by 3.6% during the second quarter. Cerity Partners LLC now owns 109,001 shares of the company’s stock worth $600,000 after acquiring an additional 3,763 shares during the last quarter. Finally, The Manufacturers Life Insurance Company grew its stake in Backblaze by 31.8% during the second quarter. The Manufacturers Life Insurance Company now owns 19,292 shares of the company’s stock valued at $106,000 after acquiring an additional 4,650 shares in the last quarter. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 54.03% of the company’s stock.

Backblaze Company Profile

Backblaze, Inc, a storage cloud platform, provides businesses and consumers cloud services to store, use, and protect data in the United States and internationally. The company offers cloud services through a web-scale software infrastructure built on commodity hardware. It also provides Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage, which enables customers to store data, developers to build applications, and partners to expand their use cases. This service is offered as a consumption-based Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and serves use cases, such as public, hybrid, and multi-cloud data storage; application development and DevOps; content delivery and edge computing; security and ransomware protection; media management; backup, archive, and tape replacement; repository for analytics, artificial intelligence and machine learning; and Internet of Things.